Whoa! Itís pretty clear from the domain registration info that IGE owns the OGaming Network. The OGaming Network admittedly owns Thottbot.com. Now we have a direct connection between IGE and Thottbot.com.

7. Thoughts.

I donít know about you but I wonít be using the Thottbot Plugin for Cosmos anymore. Itís one thing to share my gameplay information with the gaming community but something completely different to be sharing it with a company involved in a business that is prohibited by Blizzard Entertainment. Who knows what other personal information they may be collecting with Thottbot that we donít know about. Who knows if IGE is manipulating/withholding Thottbot data for business purposes to better control the market. I donít think it be the first time IGE tried to manipulate a virtual worldís market?

If this were Eq I would be suprised if they wern't collecting data. But honeslty wow must have been a big dissapointemt for IGE the demand for gold seems to be exceptionally low and wow is taking action against exploiters so they can loose accounts as well. All in all I don't think wow will be a big moneymaker.

Interesting. I've know IGE owned Thottbot for quite a while now, but didn't want to post about it. I knew they were advertising on ogaming at one point, but didn't realize they had bought them outright. IGE tried to buy us a while ago and when we refused to have anything to do with them vowed to create a network to rival ours. Looks like they are on their way to doing so. I suggest you spread the word so others know about this too. I know people playing EQ2 would be interested in this info too.

IGE buys from characters - The chinese farmers are not working for or having any transactions with IGE.

Honestly, I don't IGE is that bad of a company. Their owner is well known for those of you who played old RPGs. They really did do donations with that one bit a while back. They're not the ones behind the chinese gold farmers.

They do cause the economy imbalance, in a sense, but most people complain about the farmers, etc. They're working for the ebay companies.

"But the IGE customer service people are in Asia!" - They're in India. Everyone and their uncle outsource tech support and sales to India these days.

I'm not saying IGE is good - But they're not some child eating devils.

And even if they were - What does it matter? So they have a site where they can get ingame information from... Have you noticed the exact same information is available from Thott publicly, as well as on Allakhazam? Oh Noes! Remove all information that could be used for farming!

Advertising? I haven't noticed any IGE advertisements on Thott... or, rather, any advertisements at all. Thott being owned by OGaming is not news. It's been there for quite a while.

I honestly don't see what the issue is here. So they're working on rivaling Allakhazam. Thott's information is sparser, as well as having a tendancy to be more incorrect overall.

However, they continue to be more popular than Allakhazam for WoW.

I can see several reasons for this:

1) Ease of use. It is MUCH easier to use Thottbot to find information than Allakhazam. They even offer a firefox plugin that lets you search it where the google and other search engines reside.

2) Bigger name. Cosmos was used in the beta, and with its popularity, and attachment to Thottbot, it became well known. More people will have heard of it than they will have Allakhazam.

Those are the main reasons. If Alla wants to compete with them for the average gamer looking for information quickly, they need a way to search more quickly. Even as a member who supports Allah with a premium membership, when I'm looking for something as quickly as possible, it's more effecient to use Thott. A Firefox plugin would make me a convert instantly.

The UI thing would be interesting, if we could get a nice community mod going with features that rival that of Cosmos. Not needed, just more of an advertisement and name recognition deal.

____________________________

So I wander on, asking where you might have gone From what I knew before, some things are worth fighting for Night road leads me to a town because I'm beckoned by the glow of kerosine and tumbleweed They're calling out, forevermore worth fighting for

I will go to the animal shelter and get you a kitty-cat. I will let you fall in love with that kitty-cat. And then, on some dark, cold night, I will steal away into your home, and PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE.

I'm not saying IGE is good - But they're not some child eating devils.

...snip...

And even if they were - What does it matter? So they have a site where they can get ingame information from... Have you noticed the exact same information is available from Thott publicly, as well as on Allakhazam? Oh Noes! Remove all information that could be used for farming!

There's a pretty big gap between good and child eating devils. IMHO, they're a low-down, dirty, sneaky company that I don't wish to contribute to in any form. It's not that I have a problem with them collecting data from me. I have a problem knowingly supporting such a company.

Quote:

Thott being owned by OGaming is not news. It's been there for quite a while.

LOL, I don't think you'll find anyone in this thread saying "OMG, no way!! thottbot is ownzed by teh OGaming!!?". The news is that OGaming appears to be owned by IGE.

Quote:

1) Ease of use. It is MUCH easier to use Thottbot to find information than Allakhazam. They even offer a firefox plugin that lets you search it where the google and other search engines reside. ...snip... Those are the main reasons. If Alla wants to compete with them for the average gamer looking for information quickly, they need a way to search more quickly. Even as a member who supports Allah with a premium membership, when I'm looking for something as quickly as possible, it's more effecient to use Thott. A Firefox plugin would make me a convert instantly.

For me, it's not about any sort of competition. I could really care less about any sort of rivalry between thottbot.com and alla (competition is a good thing for the users). Like I said, I just have a problem supporting anything that IGE does. Maybe my conscience is more sensitive than yours. Oh well, to each his own.

****, I didn't even realize that an overall search existed. I see the link now that I've looked for it, but I've always used the Lookup buttons, as have my guildmates. Maybe placing a search link closer to the main section of game info might make it easier to find, as well as advertising the fact that there is a firefox search plugin, possibly by giving it a link of it's own.

Now, if a reg completely missed the fact that these existed, how about the average user? Most people just use the website to get information quickly, they're not going to be looking at the utilitarian parts of the site that aren't what they're looking for... And most of them will only see the information parts, rather than the news.

With the tool that has the best ease of use in a place that isn't the easiest to spot, it's still ineffecient.

The Firefox plugin is nice, and I'm very glad you guys pointed that out to me. It needs some more advertisement.

Now, still, the issue of ease of use exists. Alright, the search exists, and let's assume that some IE user knows of it. Now, they have a few choices:

1) Bookmark the search page. Alot of people rarely use bookmarks, alot of people use them for information that they won't be able to find without it. Bookmarking a site they know exists is likely to be lower on their list of things they want to than some random webpage they won't remember again.

Assuming that they don't do one, there are problems with: 2) Typing in the url. wow.allakhazam.com is harder to type than thottbot.com, and if they have to add /search.html or click on the search link, that's even more work. Can't shorten the URL, so if they want to use Alla, they have more work to do. Clicking on or extending the URL to the full filepath is still more work.

So, my suggestions are:

1) Create another link to the search area by the other database searchs. Possibly even make the search appear on the sidebar for even more ease of use.

2) Advertise the Firefox plugin some, give it a link on the sidebar.

___________________________

Why do you care? Because you're supporting IGE? Well, news: IGE *Does* speak with and have ties with to many of the MMORPG companies. The people who buy the currency are rarely, if ever, banned. The people who are not farming operations that sell to IGE are rarely, if ever, banned. You paying for WoW supports IGE in the sense that you are supporting the people that do business with them.

Ogaming has been owned by IGE for a while. It's not some new peice of information either. Most people will never know. Most people won't care. At this point, IGE owning Ogaming and Thott will likely never effect the users of Thott.

The thing is, giving IGE 'support' by using Thott is only using their bandwidth. It doesn't give them some special power over users.

Once they start advertising using Thott, or something that actually furthers themselves in their purpose of selling MMO currency, then I can see why it's an issue. Until then, they're just providing a resource to the community.

____________________________

So I wander on, asking where you might have gone From what I knew before, some things are worth fighting for Night road leads me to a town because I'm beckoned by the glow of kerosine and tumbleweed They're calling out, forevermore worth fighting for

Blizzard has done a wonderful job making companies like IGE ineffective because they've designed the economy so well. OK, so IGE and affiliates have a slim to none chance of seriously effecting the WoW economy. It doesn't change my opinion of IGE and supporting them. I still don't want to be a part of anything they do.

I also believe that others should be informed so they can make that same decision if it bothers them. As it is, nobody is even aware (contrary to statements indicating this is somehow common knowledge).

And for the record, I seriously don't think Blizzard doing any sort of business with IGE, as suggested. Just because they don't feel the need to announce every person they ban for such behavior doesn't mean they aren't concerned about and dealing it and it definitely doesn't mean that they're business associates.

I refer to lowering prices for buying gold. I find that most of the people who whine about gold sellers are people who used to make money selling on ebay as individuals, and are mad that they lost to more efficient competition.

But in WoW, yes gold sellers do lower prices. Why? Because everything good thats not BoP is random world drop. That means the number available is proportional to the number of mobs killed, not a fixed number. More mobs killed, more good random drops. More good random drops, more supply. More supply, lower prices. Add into that the marginal increase caused by most equipment increases (2 agi and 2 stam are not going to make a noticable difference at high level), and prices will stay nice and deflated.

Furthermore, gold sellers act as an equalizing effect on the economy. Without gold sellers, you end up with a small set of high levels with most of the money, mainly the people who play like gold sellers (lots of farming, high levels from powerleveling). These people set prices in the economy because they can afford to outbid anyone else. Good items become too costly for anyone but that small clique to afford. With gold sellers, that money becoems spread out. Instead of one person with 5K buying high power items, you end up with 100 people with 50g buying items at multiple levels of the economy. This provides insentive to become crafters (and thus lowers the price of high level craft gear as more crafters exist), and removes the powerlevel advantage- they can no longer outspend the casual players without spending significant portions of their reserve, which will cause the very best items to go higher, but greatly deflate the slightly lower tier. And since the slightly lower tier is almost as good, this will be a huge boon to the casual gamer.

Now Blizzard could easily get rid of this all- lower the epic mount price to a reasonable level (200 gold? or better yet- put the regular mount to 50 and the elite to 100), Make that the gold cap- you cannot have more than that amount of gold. This basicly becomes the price cieling for all items. This removes the need to farm, ever, and makes gold farming absolutely useless. Item farming already is. And without the need to farm even once we'd have a much better game. Won't happen though- it falls into the catagory of "its always been done this way". Blizzard won't have the guts to try it.